Legal practitioner Amanda Clinton has warned that the greatest threat posed by the current constitutional battle over the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) is not a legal technicality.
According to her, it is the risk of executive gatekeeping quietly strangling Ghana’s anti-corruption architecture.
Speaking in an interview on TV3 on April 21, 2026, Clinton acknowledged that the law, as written, appears to place the OSP in a hierarchy subordinate to the Attorney General.
She also predicted that the Supreme Court will likely affirm that position when it rules on the matter.
“The OSP derives its power from statute, and ultimately the Attorney General derives its authority directly from the Constitution. When it goes to the Supreme Court, it is going to be made very clear that the hierarchy means it is subject to the AG giving the OSP authority,” she said.
However, Clinton stressed that the legal question is only half the story. Her deeper concern is what happens in practice when prosecutorial power is funneled through a political appointee, one who sits in Cabinet, campaigns with party members, and owes political debts.
“Executive gatekeeping means these are people you eat with. These are people who were on the campaign trail with you. Should it be a case where there is corruption, is that the person you are going to leave to the slaughterhouse? Or is that a person you are going to protect?” she said.
Clinton likened the situation to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, warning of a quiet but dangerous drift from institutional independence to dependence.
“If you control the process, you control the outcome, then you control the narrative. There is this quiet shift from independence to dependence,” she said.
She also raised a structural concern that predates the current crisis, revealing that during her time as a State Attorney at the Attorney General’s Department, she was once tasked with researching whether the roles of Attorney General and Minister of Justice should be separated, a question she said has been quietly circulating in legal circles for at least two decades.
“The AG’s Department fused with the Ministry of Justice is too much power in one hand. We’re now going to add more power,” she warned.
She was careful to note that her concerns are not directed at the current administration specifically but apply to any government in a similar position, pointing out that the structural issue outlives any single presidency.
Clinton, however, urged the Supreme Court to look beyond the letter of the law when it rules and to consider the spirit behind both Article 88 of the Constitution and the creation of the OSP.
“It took us 30 years to get here. Some would argue that this will take us at least 20 years backwards in terms of the anti-corruption framework,” she said.
Source: GhanaWeb
